Bx Eran A 


Expansion in the Telugu Mission 


By 


REV. W. B. BOGGS, D. D. 


Ramapatam, Soath India 


Pale a recent annual conference of the Amer- 
cali ican Baptist Telugu Mis.ion, held at Ha- 

= namakonda, among the specially interest- 
ing reports of committees was one on the Opening o; 
New Stations. The committee, to which the subject 
was entrusted, had given to it earnest and pro- 
longed consideration, and when their report was 
presented in the conference it was recognized as a 
matter of much importance. The facts adduced and 
the arguments employed were such as to make very 
plain the urgent need of at least some of the new sta- 
tions recommended. The report was based upon en- 
tirely reliable and carefully arranged data as to the ex- 
tent, population and unevangelized condition of the 
various wide areas where new stations ought to be 
planted. As examples of these convincing facts I 
quote from the report the statements regarding two 
places where new stations are urgently recommended: 


(1) Janumpett—tThis place is situated thirty-two 
miles northeast of Palmur on the road to Hyderabad. 


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It should be the first subdivision of the great Palmur 
field, which still contains ten taluks, although the Gud- 
val field has been cut off. Mr. Chute in asking for 
new stations heads his list with Janumpett. Land has 
been secured here for a mission station. In view of the 
enormous size of the present Palmur field and the abso- 
lute impossibility of one missionary coping with the 
needs of it, your committee would emphasize the im- 
portance of entering Janumpett at a very early date. 
Up to the present, no other society has entered this ter- 
ritory. It is exclusively ours now. Can we hold it 
without manning it effectively? Accurate statistics are 
not available, but Mr. Chute has given us an estimate 
of a population of 1,400,000. Among this host only one 
mission family of any creed is attempting any work. 


(2) Peddapalli—This is a town, the headquarters 
of a large and populous zemindary in the nizam’s coun- 
try, surrounded by several extensive taluks. So far as 
your committee has been able to learn, no other society 
is doing anything in all this territory of an aggregate 
area of notless than 2,300 square miles and an agegre- 
gate population of not less than 400,000 people. We 
are responsible for this work, and what can we do for 
it under present existing arrangements? It now forms 
a part of the Hanamakonda field; but what can the 
Hanamakonda missionary do for this work when he 
has in addition three other taluks looking to him for 
evangelization? After we establish a new station and 
work at Peddapalli, the Hanamakonda missionary still 
has to hold himself responsible for territory having an 
aggregate of 2,431 square miles and 237,371 popula- 
tion. A simple statement of the extent and population 
of these needy districts will certainly emphasize more 


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than any other form of appeal the absolute and impera- 
tive need of relieving our Hanamakonda missionary of 
a portion of his heavy burden by establishing a new 
station at Peddapalli. 

Besides the above, four other new stations are 
recommended: namely, at Adoni, Podalakur, Madras 
and Tenali. Some of these fields are almost as needy 
as those described in the foregoing quotations: “Ac- 
cording to government statistics, census of I1go1, there 
were 318 Christians of all classes, children and adults, 
among a population of 178,784 in Adoni taluk, or 1 in 
562 of the population. In Pattikonda taluk (which 
would form part of the Adoni field), according to the 
same census, there were but 168 Christians among a 
population of 153,033, or I in 851 of the population.” 
There are 120,000 Telugus in the city of Madras, and 
our mission is supposed to be the agency for their evan- 
gelization, and for them we have one male missionary! 
And yet it has been the custom to congratulate our- 
selves on the great things the Telugu Mission was 
doing. The appalling facts which confront us make it 
more becoming for us to deplore our lamentably in- 
adequate occupation of the field that has been, as we 
believe, providentially given to us. 

The statements contained in the report, as shown 
- above, are in themselves an urgent appeal and furnish 
a powerful argument for speedy expansion in the mis- 
sion. For hundreds of thousands of the people in 


S 


those broad fields, whose evangelization has been com- 
mitted to us, cannot hear the gospel from us under 
present circumstances. As far as we can see they 
must continue to live and die in ignorance of Christ 
unless we advance and plant stations in their midst, 
and bring the gospel to their very doors. To do this 
is within the power of our society, if adequately sus- 
tained by its constituency; and it is difficult to avoid 
the conviction that the non-evangelization of myriads 
of the Telugu people will be chargeable to us. 


The same reasons which led our society to establish 
a mission among the Telugus sixty-five years ago, and 
in the meantime to multiply its stations from one to 
twenty-nine, should now lead us on to reach large por- 
tions of the Telugu country yet in pagan darkness, and 
for this purpose to establish many more stations. The 
reasons which moved the founders of the mission 
should speak more loudly to us today; for they are 
reenforced by the results of these sixty-five years of 
labor, and by the fact that after so long a time so many 
of the people are still unevangelized. We have par- 
tially occupied the territories above referred to, and 
for this reason other societies, respecting our nominal 
occupation, have left the work in those particular fields 
for us. How can we escape a heavy burden of account- . 
ability in this regard, if we longer fail to really oc- 
cupy those fields? 


In this whole matter the great fact that stands be- 
fore us, and from which we cannot escape, is this: that 
vast numbers of the Telugu people, within fields which 
are nominally ours, are to this day unreached by the 
gospel of Christ, and cannot be reached by it through 
us, until farther and more adequate provision is made 
for the enlargement of the work. This fact demands 
immediate, earnest, conscientious consideration in 
view of all that it implies and in prospect of the ac- 
count of our stewardship. We are held to it; we can- 
not put it away; we cannot turn away from it and be 
blameless. Another fact is this: that if the real con- 
dition were clearly seen, and its grave importance 
-recognized by the churches at home, the needed expan- 
sion of the work could be realized very easily and very 
soon. For there are ample means-in the hands of 
members of the home churches to establish and equip 
and man six new mission stations in the places named 
in the committee’s report, within the next two years. 

But some of our readers, non-resident in India, may 
be ready to ask: Are the unevangelized Telugu people 
of whom you speak, after all really in pagan darkness? 
Do they really worship idols, as their ancestors did? 
To this we answer an unhesitating, emphatic yes. They 
are in a worse condition than even their ancestors 
were, for idolatry inevitably tends to sink its devotees 
continually lower and lower in senseless, shameless 
depths of superstition. Go into any Telugu village to- 


5 


day and see the objects of their worship—absurd, re- 
pulsive, monstrous, often too shameful for more than 
a glance. Attend the festival of the village goddess 
Unkamma, and witness the despicable, gross idolatry, 
and the senseless practises connected with it; or a 
jatara, where men frenzied with drink, their necks gar- 
landed with the entrails of slaughtered victims, and 
with baskets on their heads bearing the blood and 
offal, parade through the village, attended by a noisy 
crowd, with dances and drums and drunken shouts. 
And this in the name of religion, and upheld and de- 
fended by orthodox Hinduism! And these people are 
just heathen Telugus. Do they not need the blessed 
gospel of Christ? If not, will someone tell us where 
on the face of the earth there is a people that do need 
it! / 

But possibly some might hesitate as to the urgent 
need of further expansion in the mission on the ground 
that so much has already been accomplished. , The 
thought might take this form: Have not nearly 60,000 
converts been gathered into our Telugu churches? Is 
not that a great triumph? Yes, looked at from one 
point of view, it is, if not a great triumph, at least an 
encouraging result of the work of the mission. All 
must indeed feel thankful for it, and rejoice in the 
prosperity which God has given. But when we con- 
trast it with the vastness of the work that remains to 
be done, it is merely a beginning. And we may well 


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say, what are 60,000 converts gathered from among 
the extremely poor, depressed, non-caste population. 
when compared with millions of the great body of the 
Telugu people, standing with ranks scarcely broken 
over against Christianity! The great truth is not over- 
looked or-underestimated that God has chosen the weak | 
and foolish and despised in this world in order to bring 
to naught human pride and glory. And the fact that the 
gospel here among the Telugus has taken this course 
is recognized as of divine appointment. Still the fact 
remains that to this day, within the bounds of our mis- 
sion, the non-christian Telugus, including the great 
middle class (the Sudras), outnumber our Telugu 
church members a hundred to one! 

Is it possible, then, that any can have supposed that 
-the work of this Telugu Mission is nearing completion, 
and that therefore, without advancing farther, our at- 
tention might henceforth be chiefly given to the con- 
servation of what we have already gained? No 
thought could be more utterly groundless. The thor- 
ough evangelization of all castes and classes of this 
people in the fields for which we are responsible-is yet 
to be done, and is a work of vast proportions. We are 
now getting into the midst of this great campaign. The 
past sixty-five years have been largely a time of prep- 
aration. We are now in a better position than ever 
before to advance in earnest and plant our forward 
posts at strategic points. ‘The two mighty citadels 


where the people are entrenched, namely, caste and 
idolatry, must be more closely besieged. This spiritual 
campaign must be pressed to the gates of a hundred 
Port Arthurs. There never was a time in the mission 
when the facts all around us were sounding in our ears 
such a ringing trumpet call to move forward, to close 
the ranks, to become more intense, to forget the things 
that are behind, to take the gospel to all the people, 
and to press it upon their attention until they will at 
least have an intelligent conception of the offer that has 
been made to them. 

More and more is the conviction gaining ground in 
the minds of the missionaries that the great work to 
which we are now especially summoned is the evangel- 
ization of the caste people. Judging from the multi- 
plying signs around us the time cannot now be far. 
distant when the question will be settled, right here, 
in hundreds of places in India, whether this ancient, 
corrupt, idolatrous system of Hinduism can longer 
withstand the spiritual aggressiveness of Christianity. 
That is the question, and here is the battleground. The 
result is not doubtful; we know on which side victory 
must fall. . 

All the circumstances, then, which surround us to- 
day in India, all the facts and conditions, summon us, 
with one emphatic voice, forward. To talk now of 
ceasing to advance or of curtailing the work, would 
be as utterly out of place as if the Japanese, while be- 


8 


sieging Port Arthur, had begun to consider the ques- 
tion of retrenchment and withdrawal in order to give 
their efforts chiefly to guarding what they had already 
gained. 

When there are many strong, self-sustaining, self- 
propagating churches in this land, forming a deeply- 
rooted, aggressive, spirtually-forceful Indian Chris- 
tianity, then, and not till then, may we think of such a 
thing as ceasing to reenforce and enlarge. And that 
day is apparently not near enough yet for us to begin 
to plan what we will do when it comes. Till then the 
word must be, “Spare not, lengthen thy cords and 
strengthen thy stakes.” Every year ought to bring to 
the work a good number of new missionaries and 
should see several new stations opened. 

In the minds of some who read this the inquiry will 
doubtless arise: What are the Telugu Christians them- 
selves doing for the evangelization of their heathen 
countrymen? The inquiry is a right one and deserves 
a clear answer. 

About eight years ago the Telugu Baptist Home 
Mission Society was formed, especially for the pur- 
pose of making known the gospel to certain half-civil- 
ized and very destitute classes of people, within the 
bounds of the Telugu mission field. These are the 
Yanadies, the Chentsus, the Lumbadies and others. 
Some of these are hill tribes, living almost exclusively 
in out-of-the-way places in the mountains; some are 


9 


like gypsies, living a wretched, nomadic life. For the 
most part these tribes are outside the range of ordi- 
nary gospel work, and it was primarily to reach them 
that the Home Mission Society was formed. From 
the beginning this society has awakened a deep interest 
among the Telugu Christians. Their readiness to con- 
tribute to it has been remarkable. One evangelist, him- 
self a Yanadi, has been constantly employed among the 
people of that tribe; another among the Chentsus of 
the Nulla Mulla Hills, and still another among the 
wandering Lumbadies. But especially have the Tel- 
ugu Christians taken a deep interest in this society 
since it enlarged the bounds of its work to*embrace 
the Telugu emigrants in Natal, South Africa. It has 
thus become a home and foreign missionary society. 
Many people, both Telugu and Tamil, have for years 
past been going from India to Natal, and among them 
are not a few of our Christians. To care for these 
shepherdless sheep, and also to preach the gospel to 
those among them who were still heathen, the society 
resolved three or four years ago to send a missionary 
of their own to South Africa. This they did, and the 
man whom they sent, John Rangiah, one of our best 
brethren, has done a most excellent work, and is still 
there giving proof continually that the movement was 
by divine impulse. 

The annual income of this society is about Rs. 1,300 
or $433. This may seem a small amount, but it is in 


IO 


addition to what the people contribute for their own 
pastors and teachers. And the amount must be judged 
in view of the following grim and terrible fact. 

hes poverty ol. thes. feluou “Ghristians~ is, deep, 
almost indescribable. It is impossible to give to Amer- 
ican readers an adequate idea of this poverty. It is 
safe to say that in the distressing times through which 
we have been passing, and which seem to be getting 
worse as the years go by, thousands of our Telugu 
church members have been in such abject want that it 
has brought them face to face with the question how 
to escape actual starvation. I could dwell on this sad 
picture and give details of suffering, but to us it is 
like a gaunt figure, so ghastly that we want to turn 
from it. The extreme and life-long poverty of teem- 
ing myriads in this land is one of the most painful 
and depressing subjects that we have to do with. And 
vet, with all this, the poor, half-starved people, when 
they are patiently and kindly taught their duty in this 
respect, bring their little mite offerings for the further- 
ance of the gospel. 

If our people at home could but look on these fields, 
so extensive, so ready for haryest, so full of promise, 
and yet so neglected for want of ability to cultivate 
them, the means for adequately occupying them would 
surely soon be forthcoming. If some of those who are 
able to do so would come to India as mission tourists, 
and go with Mr. Chute, for instance, through the 


II 


length and breadth of his densely-peopled field (cover- 
ing ten counties), which from its very vastness can be 
visited by the missionary only at long intervals, we 
know what deep enthusiasm would be kindled in the 
hearts of our friends, an enthusiasm akin to that which 
has led the missionaries of that field for the last twenty 
years to toil ceaselessly for the salvation of the people. 
And then if they should go with Dr. Timpany from 
Hanamakonda away across his broad field to the banks 
of the Godavery, and see the hundreds of towns and 
villages there, filled with Telugu people, destitute of 
the gospel, there would soon be in their hearts at least 
a mighty revival of the missionary spirit, a renewed 
consecration and a redoubling of effort. And if this 
new vision and call could be communicated to those at 
home, there would surely be many a solemn pledge to 
this effect: The Lord helping me, some at least of the 
Telugu people, hitherto unreached, shall have an op- 
portunity soon to hear the gospel of salvation. 


ERS 
ey 
XG y 
eegee 


American Baptist Missionary Union, Boston, Massachusetts 
611-2ED-5M-2-07 


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